Infusing thinking skills into an L2 classroom : a case study of an innovation in a Taiwanese university

PhD ThesisEmpirical research on higher-order questions has shown positive impact on student achievement in L1 and L2 classrooms in western countries and former British colonies. In association, a world-wide increase in teaching thinking has led to a debate about its applicability to L2 settings, especially to Asian learners. In Taiwan speaking has been identified as a problematic area in L2 learning and alongside equipping students with thinking skills has been highlighted as a goal of Higher Education (HE). Therefore, this study undertook a case study of an innovation where Higher-Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) approach was used to try and enhance students' L2 speaking proficiency and thinking skills. This approach had two steps. In a teacher-led setting the innovator modelled the tasks to the students which focused on how to answer higher-order questions, interact and comment on others' opinions. Students then practiced the thinking tasks in groups as part of their L2 learning. The impact on speaking and thinking and the effect on students' attitudes were examined to determine the practicability of this approach in a Taiwanese university L2 classroom. Two classes of non-English major freshmen participated in this study: one class received the innovation, while the other class did not. A mixed-method approach was applied and data collected in three phases: pre-, post- and delayed post-test. In contrast to Atkinson's (1997) claim that using a critical thinking pedagogy to teach non-native speakers of English in L2 classrooms is inappropriate, the findings show strong evidence to support the idea that a HOTS approach enhances learners' speaking and thinking performance with the majority of students holding positive attitudes. This indicates infusing thinking skills into the L2 classroom is practicable and students can be trained as active thinkers. A most significant finding was the occurrence of highcognitive interactive talk, which created numerous opportunities for speaking and thinking. This tackled the L2 speaking problems observed and met the goals of HE, i. e. it equipped university students with thinking skills and encouraged active learnin

Status and Multiple Growth Regimes

In order to explain multiple growth regimes, one of the working hypotheses is based on initial conditions. Using a standard optimal growth with the status effect represented by wealth a la Friedman (1953), this paper obtains multiple growth regimes based on initial conditions without reliance on other assumptions such as nonlinearities of production or consumption functions and heterogeneous agents/savings behavior. With the status effect, the resulting equilibrium distribution is characterized by a group with a lower level of income and another group with a higher level of income. Globally, a sufficiently strong monetary policy may be an instrument in order for an economy in poverty traps to take off and become wealthy in the long run. Locally, our model sheds light on the relationship between money/inflation and capital in the long run that, given general cash-in-advance constraints on investment relative to consumption, is determined by the curvature of the utilities of wealth and consumption.one-sector growth model, wealth effect, CIA constraint, takeoff

Inflation and Growth: Impatience and a Qualitative Equivalence

This paper studies the role of an endogenous time preference on the relationship between inflation and growth in the long run in both the money-in-utility-function (MIUF) and transaction costs (TC) models. We establish a qualitative equivalence between the two models in a setup without a labor-leisure tradeoff. When the time preference is decreasing (or increasing) in consumption and real balances, both the MIUF and TC models are qualitatively equivalent in terms of predicting a negative (or positive) relationship between inflation and growth in a steady state. Both a decreasing and an increasing time preference in consumption are consistent with the arguments in the literature. While a decreasing time preference in real balances corroborates with empirical evidence, there is no evidence in support of an increasing time preference in real balances.endogenous time preferences, superneutrality, qualitative equivalence

A Deterministic Equivalent for the Analysis of Non-Gaussian Correlated MIMO Multiple Access Channels

Large dimensional random matrix theory (RMT) has provided an efficient analytical tool to understand multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) channels and to aid the design of MIMO wireless communication systems. However, previous studies based on large dimensional RMT rely on the assumption that the transmit correlation matrix is diagonal or the propagation channel matrix is Gaussian. There is an increasing interest in the channels where the transmit correlation matrices are generally nonnegative definite and the channel entries are non-Gaussian. This class of channel models appears in several applications in MIMO multiple access systems, such as small cell networks (SCNs). To address these problems, we use the generalized Lindeberg principle to show that the Stieltjes transforms of this class of random matrices with Gaussian or non-Gaussian independent entries coincide in the large dimensional regime. This result permits to derive the deterministic equivalents (e.g., the Stieltjes transform and the ergodic mutual information) for non-Gaussian MIMO channels from the known results developed for Gaussian MIMO channels, and is of great importance in characterizing the spectral efficiency of SCNs.Comment: This paper is the revision of the original manuscript titled "A Deterministic Equivalent for the Analysis of Small Cell Networks". We have revised the original manuscript and reworked on the organization to improve the presentation as well as readabilit

Comparison of Some Vector Acceleration Techniques

Computing and Information Science

Les sources d’inspiration et les influences dans la musique de Yoshihisa Taira

Le point de départ de cette recherche est la force irrésistible qui se dégage de la musique de Taira Yoshihisa 平義久. Compositeur né à Tōkyō en 1937, il séjourna à Paris depuis son arrivée en 1966 et s’y est éteint en 2005. Avec une œuvre originale de qualité et un catalogue de quatre-vingts opus environ, la musique de Taira lui a valu plusieurs grands prix. Ses œuvres ont été créées dans le cadre des principaux festivals et des institutions de musique contemporaine, en France comme à l’étrange..

Inverse Projection Representation and Category Contribution Rate for Robust Tumor Recognition

Sparse representation based classification (SRC) methods have achieved remarkable results. SRC, however, still suffer from requiring enough training samples, insufficient use of test samples and instability of representation. In this paper, a stable inverse projection representation based classification (IPRC) is presented to tackle these problems by effectively using test samples. An IPR is firstly proposed and its feasibility and stability are analyzed. A classification criterion named category contribution rate is constructed to match the IPR and complete classification. Moreover, a statistical measure is introduced to quantify the stability of representation-based classification methods. Based on the IPRC technique, a robust tumor recognition framework is presented by interpreting microarray gene expression data, where a two-stage hybrid gene selection method is introduced to select informative genes. Finally, the functional analysis of candidate's pathogenicity-related genes is given. Extensive experiments on six public tumor microarray gene expression datasets demonstrate the proposed technique is competitive with state-of-the-art methods.Comment: 14 pages, 19 figures, 10 table